


Uneven Ground

by castironbaku



Series: Commissions! [5]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Injury Recovery, M/M, Major Character Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-02 00:33:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11498070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/castironbaku/pseuds/castironbaku
Summary: It takes only a few seconds to shatter everything Victor had spent his whole life building. But leaving the ice for good doesn't give him half as much agony as it does the one who'd caused it: Yuuri.





	Uneven Ground

**Author's Note:**

> commissioned by a friend who wished to stay anonymous!!

It was a lovely spring day. Anyone could attest to it. The occasional breeze was cool to the skin and the smell of salty brine rode upon it alongside hundreds of thousands of cherry blossom petals. The air was otherwise mild, and a few children played tag on their way to school. Yuuri waved as they passed, hollering and cheering, “Yuuri Katsuki! Yuuri Katsuki, Hasetsu’s Hero!” They giggled excitedly and ran off, their sneakers kicking up fallen petals as they went.

Yuuri’s hand fell to his side and he could hardly believe he hadn’t given in to the voice that told him to fling himself over the railing that stood between road and sea. In any case the attempt would hardly be enough to kill him, though it would certainly break more than a few bones. But maybe he _should_ break some limbs. Maybe then, he would be able to feel a physical sort of divine retribution for what he’d done.

He felt his phone buzz in his pocket and he grit his teeth slightly in annoyance. Hadn’t he turned his phone off before leaving the hot springs? Maybe he’d forgotten. Now he didn’t have an excuse not to pick up the call. He inhaled, exhaled, and answered.

“Hello?”

“Is it true,” a harsh voice resounded, trembling, from the other end of the line. “Tell me, Yuuri. Tell me it’s a lie or a joke or a prank. Tell me the punch line. I’m ready to laugh.”

Yuuri knew that Yuri Plisetsky couldn’t be farther from laughter. The boy was seventeen now, but remained perpetually close to a fit of anger or a bout of sulkiness. It was easy to make people like him angry and even easier, Yuuri learned, to make them cry.

“The surgery is in a month,” he said. “Press statement on Monday.”

There was silence on the other end, but even Yuri had an interesting talent of creating silences heavier than a thousand words. Perhaps he’d picked it up from Otabek.

“He’s fine, Yurio,” Yuuri tried for a lighter tone. “He even laughs about it. He tells me he’s always wanted to try sitting in a wheelchair. He’s not dead or anything like that.”

“He isn’t,” Yuri said, his accent sharpening his words, already glacial, into razor points, “but he might as well be.” And dramatic as ever, he dropped the call and Yuuri stared at his phone for a few moments before pocketing it. His fingers felt numb, like he’d submerged them in ice water for three hours. In fact his whole body felt strangely numb. Maybe he really was frozen. Maybe he’d fallen through thin ice and drowned and this was all an elaborate hellscape that he had created for himself as he died, slowly, underwater.

He didn’t want to go back. If he did, he would have to thaw himself out and feel everything at full force. He would have to see Victor, prone on his bed with his leg in an immobilizing cast that was every professional athlete’s nightmare. But every step he took, however stilted and painful, brought him ever closer to Victor, just as every moment in his life had been a desperate attempt to breathe the same air as Victor. If he forgot about everything else, Victor was the one thing, the one place, and the one person that he had done it all for.

And Yuuri had, with a single misstep of the heart, destroyed everything that Victor held dear.

* * *

 

“Oh, come on, Yuuri, you exaggerate,” Victor said lightheartedly. He sat, propped up against a mound of pillows, with Makkachin resting her head against his lap. “I was going to retire anyway. I didn’t miss out on much.”

Yuuri was sitting on the edge of the bed, unable to say anything in reply. Victor’s smile was trying to vindicate him and he didn’t want to be vindicated. He wanted to be accused, abused, and incarcerated for all his crimes. He deserved it.

“Yuuri, look at me… Look at me. Please?”

With great reluctance, he turned around, but all he could look at were the velcro straps that kept Victor’s leg secured firmly to the strip of metal hidden in the cast which acted as a sort of splint. His nose ached and he felt his eyes well up with tears. He closed them, determined not to let Victor see him cry.

Victor reached out to touch his face. It was meant to be a reassuring gesture, or perhaps one of comfort, but Yuuri didn’t feel as though he could accept it. “The only thing this injury makes me regret is how I can’t run after you on the beach like I used to, or crawl up behind you on the tatami mats… The only things I miss are the things I could have done, with you.”

Yuuri shook his head. That wasn’t true. The fact that he hadn’t even mentioned the ice or his long-awaited return to it, was evidence enough of the pain that he himself could not deny, or bear to lie about, even to Yuuri. It was a battle of sincerity over reassurance, and lying was one thing that Victor was starting to grow bad at. Or maybe Yuuri was just getting better at reading him.

“I’m going to be fine, Yuuri,” Victor said gently. “Don’t worry about me. I suppose I was never supposed to return, after all—which is not to say that’s a bad thing,” he added hastily. “Oh, Yuuri… Please don’t look at me like that… It hurts me when you’re in pain too.”

Makkachin lifted her head drowsily. She looked up at Victor with a curious look and he flashed her a sad smile. Yuuri couldn’t take it anymore. He stood up, excused himself, and left the room. He felt the tears come even as Victor called his name to come back.

* * *

 

A month later, he was standing in front of Victor’s room at the biggest hospital in St Petersburg. He felt ridiculous for hesitating—this was his husband after all—but he couldn’t stop himself from chewing on his bottom lip and pacing a few steps to and fro. He was starting to feel both hot and cold. Sweat beaded on his forehead, yet the hospital air felt frigid. He wasn’t supposed to be here, as the cause behind the whole affair. Yet he _was_ supposed to be here.

He was in the extraordinary situation of being both necessary and unnecessary at the same time. He wanted nothing less than not to be in this sort of situation. He knew he was being selfish, unreasonable. He remembered the pain that flashed behind Victor’s eyes when he’d first gotten on his knees to apologize with his forehead pressed to the floor. He would have given anything— _anything_ —to undo what he’d done to Victor.

Curious stares and glances bore into his back as he paced, now with the knuckle of his index finger between his teeth. He was at the end of his wits when the door to Victor’s room swung inward and a nurse appeared at the threshold. Her expression brightened when she saw Yuuri and she greeted him in cheery Russian. He forced a smile. She had blockaded his escape, and now he was certain that Victor knew he was here.

When she edged past him to head to her next patient, he took a deep breath and stepped into the room, half-hoping Victor was asleep. His hopes were dashed.

Victor smiled beatifically at him, the tranquil brightness of his smile magnified by the morning sunlight that filtered in through the gauzy white windows. His leg was, thankfully, hidden from view by the thick white covers of his bed. He waved Yuuri over to his honorary seat at his bedside and Yuuri felt himself flinch impulsively at the IV drip hooked up to his arm.

“How was your run?” Victor asked him.

“Long,” Yuuri replied. “Oh, and”—he rummaged through his backpack—“here are the magazines from home that you wanted me to bring back.”

Victor accepted the magazines, his hand lingering on Yuuri’s, and smiled. “Thank you, Yuuri. It’s been terribly boring. They’ve been having issues with the cable TV, so it’s all local news.”

Yuuri managed a more sincere smile than the one he had flashed the nurse earlier. “Boring,” he agreed. “Does your leg hurt? Tell me you’re letting them keep you another day.” He remembered, with terrifying clarity, the way Victor had woken the day before when the painkillers had run out. It had been terrifying and painful to watch. More than anything, it was frustrating and depressing him that he couldn’t simply take away all of Victor’s pain.

“It’s not as bad as yesterday,” Victor said truthfully, patting his thigh over the covers. “They’ve prescribed more medication since then, and I’m certain I can leave by this afternoon. And before you can say anything, I _insisted_ to be discharged on time.”

Yuuri felt concern grip him. “Are you absolutely sure? Don’t lie if it hurts, Victor. I don’t… I _hate_ seeing you hurt.”

“I know,” Victor said softly, covering Yuuri’s hand with his on the sheets. “I know. But I can’t bear to stay here, away from you.”

“I can easily come here any time you need me,” Yuuri protested.

“It’s not the same, and I honestly prefer being able to go to you myself. Besides, I can’t leave you entirely to Yakov—I’d be even _more_ indebted to him. As if I weren't enough already.”

When Yuuri failed to laugh like he normally would have, Victor leaned forward and kissed him, ever so gently, on his lips. “Yuuri, I’m your husband, till death do we part, and I would never hold a grudge against you for what was just an honest accident. You shouldn’t need to feel guilty for something that was never your fault.”

“But you wouldn’t have fallen in the first place if I hadn’t _shoved_ you,” Yuuri said, his throat constricting painfully. “And I wouldn’t have done that if I wasn’t angry. Which I was. And for something completely stupid.”

Victor squeezed his hand. “I can’t make excuses for forgetting what I’d promised you,” he said. “I’m sorry for it, but I won’t be broken up by it. I won’t let us break over something like that. I’d make you a thousand anniversary dinners and shower you in all the love you deserve, but I will _never_ let you go.”

Yuuri, who’d been fearing and expecting punishment and desertion, felt relief flood his senses, washing away the guilt and everything else. He felt tears on his cheeks as he said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I took the ice away from you. I’m sorry I took your world away from you.”

“Yuuri,” Victor sighed. “You _are_ my entire world. My love and my life. The ice, the rink, the audience—none of it can compare, and none of it could ever give me what you do. None of it could make me as happy as you do. So you have nothing to be sorry for. I will miss skating competitively, but I’d rather lose it all over again than leave you over something like this.”

Yuuri straightened, wiping the tears from his eyes, though more kept on coming. He cried, not out of sadness, but happiness. Relief. Love. “I was terrified,” he said, his voice thick. “I kept waiting for you to be angry. To hate me and blame me, which you had every right to.”

“You know I could never hate you.”

And to Yuuri’s surprise, he _did_ know that. He knew, with oddly comforting confidence that Victor would never, _could_ never hate him, in much the same way he also knew that he could never hate Victor. He lifted Victor’s hand and pressed it to his forehead, then his lips. “Would you like some katsudon for dinner?” he murmured against Victor’s fingers.

“I’d love to,” Victor said, stroking Yuuri’s cheek. “Though I might have trouble moving around the way you might want me to…”

Yuuri flushed pink to his neck and the tips of his ears. “I meant—I would make it—for dinner,” he stammered. He flushed even redder before continuing in a much smaller voice, “But… when you get better… I…” He cleared his throat. “I wouldn’t, erm, mind _that_.”

Victor laughed. “I know,” he said before leaning in to kiss Yuuri again. “I know.”

 


End file.
